Indigenous Services

Description

Indigenous Services works diligently to create and deepen the awareness of Indigenous culture and its relevance to one’s healing of identity, trauma, and reconciliation with all staff members and participants. Indigenous Services aims to uphold Turning Leaf’s commitment to Truth and Reconciliation, fostering an environment of Cultural Sensitivity, and supporting our First Nations participants in their journeys. Over the last year, the Elder who joined us spent approximately 1200 hours with participants in sacred practice, allowing many participants to reconnect with their culture.

Indigenous
Services

Indigenous Services offers ongoing Cultural Sensitivity Training for staff so our team can best support our Indigenous population in their journeys. We actively create opportunities for Indigenous cultural practice for participants including: Painting Therapy, Dreamcatchers, Traditional Rattles, Drum Making, Traditional Feasts, Beading, Traditional Music and Song, Medicine Wheel Teaching, and Harvesting Natural Tobacco.

The Elder who joins us also creates space for spiritual, ceremonial, and social experiences such as Sweat Lodge and Teachings, 4 Medicines, Naming Ceremonies, Smudging Ceremonies, Sharing and Healing Circles, Solstice Celebrations, Coming of Age Ceremony, Powwows, Round Dance and more. These sacred practices were outlawed in our history, and Turning Leaf facilitates what Aboriginal participants innately deserve – space to practice their traditional ways of healing and to embrace their culture.

Elder
Services

Elder Services are available to all participants in all programs and activities are tailored to each participant’s interests and needs. The Elder who joins us also offers one-on-one teachings with participants and staff. The nurturing and building of kinship and relationships of reconciliation to the betterment and healing of all involved is central to Turning Leaf’s Indigenous Services.

We are in the era of Truth and Reconciliation and the Elder who joins us recommends Indigenous People be in charge of their own spirituality. We will continue to foster and heal the relations between Indigenous people and the rest of society, and as a non-native organization, Turning Leaf demonstrates the positive relations that the original treaties were intended to be – a relationship of peace and sharing.

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